1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for employing wireless electrical communication for selectively locating and/or selectively identifying entities.
2. Description of Related Art
There are many ways in which identification of people and objects can be accomplished. People have physical characteristics, such as fingerprints or distinguishing facial characteristics, that can be used for identification. Other types of biometric data, such as data from retinal scans, may also be used. For example, an airport might use a facial recognition system as part of its security screening. Information for human identification is often augmented by artificial means, such as ID badges or smart cards, on which identification information is placed.
Inanimate objects can also be identified by inherent physical features, but man-made objects are often identified using an assigned identification number, such as a serial number. An identification number is applied to a man-made object in a human-readable or a machine-readable manner, which allows the man-made object to be identified by humans or machines, as appropriate. In many cases, though, a corporation or an organization is not interested in identifying the man-made object on which the identification number is placed but yet a different man-made object to which the object with the identification number is attached. In this manner, an object with an identification number is typically used as a label to be affixed to another object. For example, governmental organizations are not interested in identifying license plates via license plate numbers; the automobiles to which the license plates are attached are the specific objects that are meant to be identified. A license plate can be regarded as a type of label or tag, similar to a label or tag that is affixed to a package or to a product.
There are many scenarios in which a corporation or an organization may desire to identify a person, an animal, or an inanimate object. In some cases, an entity is tagged for a specific identification purpose, e.g., when a person is tagged by means of an ID badge that is valid or meaningful only for a given corporation. Even so, significant effort may be exerted in obtaining, managing, and protecting identification information to ensure that it is not abused. In other cases, an entity might be permanently tagged in a manner that is useful for many different parties, such as bar codes on product labels, and this identification information is freely available and generally recognizable.
There are some scenarios, though, in which a corporation or an organization may desire to have a temporary ability for identifying or locating a person or an inanimate object, and it would not be appropriate to employ the mechanisms that are noted above or other well-known mechanisms. For example, in some cases, it would not be cost-effective to expend significant effort beforehand to register someone or something in order to provide a unique identification number. In other cases, it might not be appropriate to affix an identification label for a temporary purpose.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to implement methods and associated devices that enable short-term identification and location of persons and things without significant registration procedures beforehand and without requirements to access proprietary databases to obtain identifying information. It would be particularly advantageous to enable short-term identification and location of persons and things while employing labels or tags that have already been affixed to objects for other purposes.